


I’m still me

by GalaxyDandy



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Body Horror, Cyberization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25102327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyDandy/pseuds/GalaxyDandy
Summary: After 12 years of being a partner and a prime, Jack Darby faces a new chapter in his life and a redefinition of his friendship with Arcee.
Relationships: Arcee/jack
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

Ch1- Battlefield Triage 

Blurred vision. Muffled voices. Pain. Ratchet looks down at his patient yelling for him to hold on. Keep breathing. The Mobile Repair bay under his body feels cold, hard and unforgiving as even with hover pads humming on the underside, every jostle and bump tears through his systems like hot needles.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. The mission was supposed to be straight forward, like they’d done a hundred time before. The Wreckers take down the outward defense forces and the Stealth Team would come in from underground. Airachnid, was new to the crew, but she’s got eons of experience. She wasn’t the problem. She burrowed under the bunker and got Arcee and the team in safely. It was me, he thinks. I’m the one who messed up. 

His eyes go dark and his hearing swims around in his head, her voice brings him to the surface. “JACK! JACK STAY AWAKE, PARTNER!” Did he pass out or did she pause, “You’re going to be fine. Ratchet is bridging in your mother. The two of them will fix you right up.”

Then blackness. Time must have passed. A coma, maybe? Everything feels warm and rippling under his prone body. They must have moved him to a human sized bed as he doesn’t feel like he’s a tiny being on the MRB surface anymore. Everything still hurts, but it’s dulled. Arcee? Is that her? His vision is blurry...wait, no it isn’t...it’s out of focus, but not blurry. How does that make sense? Aren’t they the same? Something inside tells him they aren’t. Not a voice. Information. Blurry you can’t control, but focusing is a something you can do. 

“Oh no, he’s...awake. Call Ratchet!” Doctor June Darby’s voice is a welcome familiarity. Jack sits up in the bed and feels for his forehead. It doesn’t feel right. Nothing feels ‘right’. “Jack, try not to move. Please, just lay back down.”

Jack looks up and pulls his eyes into focus. A whir behind them startles him as she becomes clear. She’s on a lower platform. No...she’s on the same plane as him, but she’s...small. Jack looks up and sees a reflective metal wall. He sees glowing blue eyes looking back at him. Servos and gears clicking around in his joints. The reflected image of a skinned Cybertronian looks back at him and screams. 

Arcee and Ratchet run in. Arcee grabs Jack’s shoulders to steady him. Eye to eye she inhales slowly then exhales in equal measure, demonstrating the cooling functions to him. He knows intrinsically that it’s a cooling system, not lungs. Not breathing. Despite knowing the function, seeing Arcee perform it for him he cannot engage the turbines within his chest and his system starts seizing. 

“Blast it, hold him down! Pin him if you have to.” Wheeljack runs in just as Arcee pushes Jack down onto the MRB. Wheeljack adds weight to ensure Jack can’t get back up. June yells out for them not to hurt her son. She knows these bots and she knows they’ll do their best, but she is after all a mother of a son in torment. Ratchet, hands shaking from endless cycles of war tries to place a line into one of the cylindrical ports under Jack’s ribcage. 

Wheeljack plants an angular forearm across Jack’s neck and collar joints. There’s a metallic snap. “SCRAP! I forgot he doesn’t have exo armor yet.” Jack howls in pain, his voice is tinny and layered as his vocalizer is crushed under Wheeljack’s weight. “Let me go! What’s happened to me. LET GO!” 

“JACK!” Arcee straddles his chest and cups his face in her hands. He stops straining as her blue optics meet his. “I’m never letting you go. Stay with me.” His turbines engage. The kibble about his chest started expanding and shrinking with each breath. June sucks in a gasp of relief just as Ratchet places the dongle end of the cable into Jack’s rib port. 

Jack seizes as energon flows into his repositories. He feels more together and suddenly data flies across his field of view. His brain begins to reorganize his memories and thoughts into linear patterns. Pathways form connecting memories to his present. 

“I died.”

Arcee slides off him as he settles back onto the MRB. “No, Jack...you...you lived.”

June pulls herself up onto the edge of the bed and kneels next to his shoulder. His optics scan the cybernetic left leg and right arm of his mother. He knows how she got them, but seeing them as components like this is new. His sensors register them as more familiar than her flesh. His brow servos knit.

“Mom?” She places a hand on his chest.

“You rest now Jack. They’re going to finish up here and when you’re whole, we’ll talk. And Jack, just remember what you told me when I got these.” His eyes lower as his pulls up the file with that memory. “Whether metal or flesh, blood or energon, you’re still you. You said that to me.”

Jack looks up at the ceiling as his repair protocols engage shutting down his cognitive functions. The blue in his eyes fades to black. “I’m still me.”


	2. The Incident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback to how it all went down.

Airachnid burrows up through the concrete floor and deploys her spider-legs skittering up into the wide, stocked arms warehouse. She takes in the stockpile of missiles, small arms, tanks and shipping containers full of the like. Arcee comes out next, blasters at the ready. She tumbles across the floor and rises up, back against a stack of crates. Air goes up into the rafters and blends into the shadows. Last up through the hole is a grappling hook latching to the jagged edge of the hole and out comes Jack. 28 years old, prematurely grizzled. A scar lines the left side of his neck. A gift from an old confrontation with a clone of Silas. That meeting spurred a series of battles with the resurrected terrorist organization, M.E.C.H.

Here, now, the final stand is to take place. The Cybertronian Defense Force has been hunting down their facilities and destroying them. This by all information appears to be the last and most central facility remaining. Silas’s clone has been reported to be here running the organization and deploying a new series of weapons said to turn the tide against the bots and their allies.

Arcee gestures for Jack to take cover. She points to her right auditory receptor then holds up four fingers. Jack nods and tosses the hologram generator Mirage outfitted for them into their entry hole. A flicker later and the concrete appears whole again. Jack unholsters his blaster pistol and steps quickly between a row of shipping containers. The four guards patrolling flank at the edges of the center walkway two by two. 

The pairs split occasionally to peer down rows and aim flashlights affixed to the undersides of their rifles. “Clear.” A pause. “Clear.” Row after row they continue their routine sweep. Jack had gotten the location and procedures from a M.E.C.H. agent he caught trying to break into their desert base. Confident in their plans, Jack pushed for this operation. Bee had his reservations about it, but Miko assured him that she and the Wreckers would watch out for the whole operation. The sudden shake of the walls and the thunderous sound of explosions outside says she’s holding up her end of the deal. 

One guard nears Jack’s spot and suddenly a sleek black spider-leg whips down grabbing him by the face to pre-emptively silence him and yanks him into the shadowy rafters. A sinister but familiar raspy laugh titters in the dark just before a sickening crack sound. The war got more violent when other species got involved, Jack thought to himself. His jaw clenched as he felt bigoted.

The cybertronians had been dying in the thousands throughout the centuries. He chides himself for the thought and then slips from his cranny and knocks the next guard’s gun upward with the butt of his own blaster. Catching the guard’s throat in the nape between his thumb and index finger causes his target to wheeze in pain, unable to call out. The blaster is nestled up in the guard’s ribs under the protective vest, the eruption of energy is muffled. The guard goes limp in Jack’s arms and he drags the body behind a crate. Just then he hears a couple of clicks of hammers locking behind him.

He raises his hands and slowly turns to the last two guards who have him in their sights. Then a flash of silver behind them, and then fall down, blood pooling from the large slash across both their backs. Arcee stands up to her full height and retracts her forearm blade with a smile. She is ALWAYS there for him. For more than a decade, she’s his ride, his guardian, his partner.

Dubbed a Prime by Optimus himself, Jack always felt the need to contribute more to this war. So he became a soldier for them, his friends from another world. But he’s human, and despite time and time again proving they’re exceptional humans, team Prime’s human companions are still in fact human and therefore have limitations. Is that bigoted too? Inter-species relations and war bring so many complex issues to mind.

Airachnid whispers over the comms, “I can see no more humans, but stay alert. You are a sneaky bunch.”

Jack and Arcee approach some crates and begin searching for the rumored weaponry. “The widow calling the kettle black, huh?” Arcee calls back, a hint of a smile in her voice. Air used to be their enemy, but after Team Prime found a cure for her zombie plague, she found a place with them. Trust built over years and the Stealth team was formed. The three of them taking on the more subtle, nuanced missions. Arcee taught Jack to fight and eventually to kill for the mission. Air taught him how to live with it.

“Guns.” Jack calls out as he opens and then closes a crate. “Armor” As he goes through another.

Arcee pulls open the double doors to a large metal shipping container. “Some highly weaponized all terrain vehicles. Could be a good alt mode for someone.” She turns her attention to a series of much larger crates. Uniform in size and lined up by the dozen.

“Over here.” Arcee calls out. Jack walks up to join her. They exchange a look, confident this is what they were looking for. “My currency is on Null cannons. Massive ones.”

With a bated breath, Jack presses a glowing button at edge of the high tech crate. A spout of cold steam comes from the seams as the front of the crate, splits with a hiss and opens. The inside of the crate flickers to a low blue white glow. 

All three exclaim simultaneously. “Primus’s eyes.” “By the all-spark.” “Oh...shit.” 

Arcee and Jack step back from the crate as the eyes on Megatron’s face blink on, glowing bright red. All of his energon channels along his body flicker on as well. A raking voice groans and exhales while its head lifts meeting a gaze with the two heroes.

Suddenly the lights all turn on with a clang clang clang across the warehouse. A panel dissolves its shielding high above them behind Megatron. Silas’s clone stands there chuckling. “A shame it’s only you three. I was hoping you’d bring more.”

“Silas...how...how do you have Megatron? He’s been dead for years.” Arcee demands.

“I’m not Silas my dear. You know that. And I suspect you know...that is not Megatron. He’s worse...all of them are.”

The uniform crates open one by one revealing Megatron after Megatron. Clawed fingers flex. Eyes light up. Growling voices come online as they step from their crates and raise their fusion cannons.

Purple flashes of light erupt destroying the back wall and everything between here and there as 12 cannons blast at Arcee and Jack. Very nearly atomized, Arcee and Jack find their footing in the rafters as Air releases them from her sleek spider-legs. “We need to go. NOW.”

Jack hops on her thorax as she makes a skittering run across the ceiling supports and Arcee leaps from beam to beam. Blasts just missing them with each step they take. Suddenly the whole building shakes violently. A blast meant for them goes awry and the trio fall 40 or so feet to the floor with a hard clang of metal bodies. Air does her best to use her legs to lessen the impact for Jack, but it’s still painful for him. They look up and a dust cloud obscures the far end of the warehouse. Glowing red eyes and energon channels dot the haze, as do blue ones. The dust clears out as a heavy impact of a giant fist rocks one of the Megatron Clones backwards over the fallen trio. The robotic hand comes back and Miko in her Wrecker Armor chuckles. “Pa-Pow freak! You guys okay?”

“We are now!” Jack calls out as all three return to the battle. Jack taps a button on his wrist bracer and a pair of solid light gauntlets encase his hands. Similarly a pair of boots overlay his feet. In a moment, Jack’s strides send him up into the air with each step, putting him at bot height for battle. His fist collides with a Megatron staggering it away from Miko who turns seeing the save. 

“NICE!” She cries out excitedly. “WRECKERS! WRECK HOUSE!” The walls explode inwards as Bulkhead rams through a wall and grapples a Clone. Blades flash as Wheeljack cuts a swath through the crowd. The clones while powerful don’t seem to have Megatron’s wealth of experience and gladiatorial skills. They’re not dying easy, but the fight doesn’t seem as hopeless now.

Jack looks up through the raging battle and sees the window has gone dark where Silas’s clone just was. “Damn it. He’s gone.” Just then a door opens in the back wall. A MASSIVE form is framed there. A single eye lights up. 

“Gone? Of course not. Not without breaking something first.” The giant bot steps in. The form is familiar, but even bigger than anyone would remember him being. BREAKDOWN’s form hisses as the chest carapace opens revealing Silas’s clone nestled amongst controls and wires. Just like when Silas became Cylas. “Miss me?”

Bulkhead sees the monstrosity and snarls. “Just like the meat sack you came from, you’re desecratin’ an old friend?” Bulkhead rages and runs at Breakdown with his mace out. 

“We were not friends!” Breakdown’s hand becomes a huge hammer and smashes Bulkhead face down into the floor. His other hand reaches down grabbing Bulkhead’s helmet seams lifting him up eye to eye, energon leaking from multiple cracks in his skull. “Clearly we never were. You bots left me in the past to die, and later you humans used me as a puppet. Well now I’m the puppet master.”

Wheeljack’s eyes snap to Bulky and Breakdown. “Is everyone coming back from the dead?” 

“M.E.C.H backed up me when they originally were pulling me apart.” He throws Bulkhead at Wheeljack who catches his friend like a lob ball. They collapse in a heap on the ground. “Just in case they could pull some more cybertronian tech from my brain. Lucky for me, they were also making back ups of Silas with ports ready to integrate him into another Breakdown body. And beep there I went, networking into the clone and putting myself back in...myself.” He looks down at his new giant body.

“This was a trap...” Jack grunts as he fights a Clone. 

Breakdown smashes Miko aside. “Of course it was stupid human. You think you could get actual intel from one of my puppets?”

Jack turns seeing the dead guards stand back up. And the fallen Megatron clones rise up as well. The Cybertronians regroup near the end of the warehouse that was blown out by the clones. “Puppets?” The guards eyes glow the same color as the Megatron clones. More guards filter into the room. “They’re bots!”

Breakdown chuckles and closes the carapace in his chest. “Not exactly. Silas had at least one good idea. The Megatron clones open their face plates revealing human like skulls and sinew. Bots can be repaired. But humans heal almost infinitely given the right circumstances. Mix in a little energon and some alien tech from hundreds of worlds and you have soldiers who don’t appear on scanners as either bots or as meat sacks AND they self repair in the field. Pretty brilliant trap, if I do say so myself. And meat sack, you lead everyone into it.”

Jack stands up breathing heavily. “This is my fault.”

“I mean, I gotta take some of the credit. Oh and if it makes you feel any better...this facility and these clones are just the prototypes. Sketches if you will. So you didn’t even lead them to your actual target. OH wait...that doesn’t make you feel better. Oh well.”

Suddenly all the Clones and guards stand up straight, their eyes flashing in quickening succession. 

“Son of a bitch.” Miko stands in her armored form, helping Wheeljack lift up Bulkhead. More Megatron clones block the way out. She looks back and forth and then to Jack. Suddenly a bright green glow erupts to their left. At the center of it they see Ratchet in the Space Bridge Terminal on Cybertron!

“Nice timing, doc!” Wheeljack hefts Bulkhead and leaps through. The beeping and flashing gets faster and faster. Miko turns and help Air to her feet and they go through. Air grabs Jack on her way out. They get through when Jack looks back and screams.

“ARCEE!” His partner is in a full tilt run at Breakdown.

“You won’t get away, you monster!” Her blades out, she leaps through the air ready to vivisection the giant hybrid bot. A flash of pain rocks her body as her arms are captured between Breakdown’s massive hands. She can feel her exo armor collapsing in with metallic tings of crumple. 

“JACK! WAIT” Air reaches out as the bridge is closing behind Jack who has left through. 

“What in the name of Primus.” Ratchet smacks the console for he bridge not understanding the failure. He looks up and sees Breakdown looking directly at him while torturing Arcee. “He’s jamming me...ARCEE! JACK!”

Air reaches through the bridge, her fingers brushing Jack’s back as the bridge closes and severs her shoulder servos. She falls back onto her teammates screaming in pain. Her arm falls silent on the other end. Jack looks back only briefly, pained with the idea that she was hurt. Then he turns resolved to help Arcee before everything goes up.

Jack double taps the button on his wrist and the holo armor covers his whole body. A little light next to the buttons flickers with a message of ‘low energy.’

The clones and guards eyes stop blinking and hold a steady glow as the beep becomes a solid shrieking alarm sound. 

Jack leaps up with a glowing fist raised, but is smacked out of the air by Breakdown. Jack’s armor blinks in out and out of existence when he impacts a crate. He looks up in time to see that Arcee with an arm free slashes Breakdown’s good eye. Then kicks herself free of him. Her left arm is absolutely crushed. Just the impact of landing on the ground shakes the arm loose in its socket dangling by several cables. 

“JACK, we’re going!” She transforms with the familiar chee chu chu and rolls quickly past him. Jack grabs hold and mounts the racing motorcycle. 

“The way is blocked!” Jack screams

“We got in a different way!” The blue motorcycle and passenger fall through the floor suddenly passing the holographic cover to the hole Air burrowed in earlier. Jack exhales a moan of relief as they race down their entry tunnel. The world is suddenly hot and bright orange. The air around them pushes hard against their bodies as it fills with concussive force and then fire. The entire warehouse and its contents explode and the tunnel is pumped full of chaos. 

Arcee’s arm damage causes her front wheel strut to give in. The tire wobbles at speed and bot bike and human are sent end over end as the fire overtakes them. Jack’s last view is of Megatron hybrid debris flying at him. Cloned flesh, bone and metal tear through his failing armor and then his skin. He feels his lungs collapse and fill through his rib cage with fire. 

The last thing he thinks he hears before his ears are gone is Arcee screaming.


	3. First Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack adjusts to his new life and form. Ratchet offers little sympathy. Arcee offers plenty.

Ch 3 - First Contact

Standing on a catwalk that encircles the gigantic structure, Jack stares into the vest cavernous tube leading down to a hot spot. Cybertronian of many shapes and sizes mill about on the hundreds of catwalks encircling and criss crossing the massive cylinder. A steady hum and a pulsing glow from far far below illuminates everything softly. 

Life begins down there for most Cybertronians. Or other hot spots similar to it. Over a decade ago, Optimus sacrificed himself to reignite the creation of sparks and bring life back to Cybertron. Since then countless enemies near and far have tried to claim the planet and its new resources. The time when labels like Decepticon or Autobot had meaning are long past. Old enemies are now allies, some even conjux enduras. It’s a new of reawakening and new beginnings. It’s apt then, that Jack looks at the glowing circle in the palm of his pink hand and ponders deeply on his new lease on life. 

“Pretender shell still feel weird?” Ratchet walks up the steps carrying a tiered container of sparks intended for new protoforms. “I can adjust the sensory input again if you like?”

Jack looks up at the elder Cybertronian and smirks. “No thanks Ratchet...just getting used to having skin again. It itches a little.” He holds up his the back of his hand. “And glows apparently.” 

Ratchet rolls his eyes, “Jack...you have a message in your comm link.” Jack looks from his glowing hand to Ratchet sheepishly and then taps the blue dot under his ‘skin’. A familiar voice drones out. 

“Jack, it’s Mom. Arcee’s been asking about you. You haven’t taken any visitors and then suddenly you’d left the recovery bay. Please, we’re worried about you.” 

The glow fades from his hand and Jack sighs resting his hands on the railing looking out into the vast emptiness that is the center of the hot spot pit. Ratchet moves to say something, then clenches his jaw and walks into the archway of the Spark Processing center. 

A few long moments pass and Jack suddenly feels a hand on his shoulder. “Ratchet-“

“Do our hands feel that similar, Jack?” Arcee asks as she comes up beside him.

“Arcee? I...sorry. Scale is still a little strange.” His glowing blue eyes reflect in her silvery face plate and he averts his eyes, turning back to the pit.

They stand in silence just staring at the work being down below. Arcee doesn’t look up when she asks “I know when you woke up it was a shock, but it’s been a few cycles and you still haven’t talked to me or June. You even left without telling anyone where you were going.”

More silence. “Is it that bad? Being like us?”

Jack stiffens and stumbles his words. “WH-ah-NO. No that’s not it.” He lifts his hands realizing he’s crushed the railing. “It’s...an adjustment.”

“Mm...servos being so much stronger than muscle. You won’t hurt anyone, Jack. You’re not THAT strong. Not for a cybertronian.”

“It’s not that...it’s...I feel horrible, Arcee. After so many years being part of the team. Working with you all, fighting for you...caring about you. I never knew you at all.”  
She turns and rests her posterior armor against the railing and crosses her arms. “How’s that? You, Miko and Raf know us better than any human. Well except for that lady Bee visits on Earth that he doesn’t talk to us about. Still though, you know us, Jack.”

“You’re warm.” He turns away from her and touches the wall near the entry arch. “You all are. Every time I touched a bot, rode inside or on one I always felt cold machinery. I know you are alive and have souls...sparks...but physically you’re so cold to us. Still. Even after battle, you remain at most room temperature and it always felt like a clear boundary.”

She understands. “Suddenly having different sensory input, you feel the life that courses through all cybertronians, our tech, our worlds...our lives. I didn’t know until we interacted on Earth that others didn’t feel it. The vibration. The pulse. You always claim our armor is so hard, but to our touch it gives like a gel. We can feel micrometers of atoms giving under the pressure of our touch. It’s a soft touch.”

She places a hand on his his back, feeling the shoulder blade plating under the pretender shell shifting. “Your skin, it feels delicate, like tissue. I thought surely humans could feel even more deeply than we do. But it’s not more or less deeply, we just feel different things.”

“There’s more. Mom reminded me when I shorted out, that I’m still me. But I’m not so sure about that. I remember school, my first bike, when my mom decided becoming a field surgeon was her true calling and switched career paths. I remember her being injured by Soundwave and Ratchet and Unit E surgeons giving her the cybernetic replacements. I remember...dying.”

“Jack, you didn’t die.” She wraps her arms around him from behind gently. “We got out of there. We were injured, but you were repaired. Like your mother. More extensively, but it’s the same thing. You’re still in here.” She places her palm softly on his chest. 

“I’m sorry...I’m being ungrateful. You saved me.” 

“Jack. We saved each other. We were both caught in the blast. You were burned so badly, Jack.” She hugs him a little tighter and her voice trembles. “Hurt so badly, but that technology from the clones was already bonding to your flesh. You knew somehow that your blood was becoming energon. You hooked your heart into my spark chamber and you kept me strong enough to bring us both here. You saved me as much as I saved you, partner.”

Pulling her hands into his own and then turning to face her, Jack keeps his eyes cast down. “I don’t remember any of that, Arcee. I remember the explosion. I remember you screaming and then I remember being here...like this. I have memories, but there’s other stuff. I know things about Cybertron. I have all this information that tells me I know what my inner workings are and the general layout of a military base for Autobots.”

“It’s a data dump.”

“What?”

“You’re not exactly cybertronian, but all protoforms get a basic data dump when they come online. We don’t grow up as children so we are provided a general education that would allow us to function in a society, understand hierarchy...fight in wars.”

“Oh my god...I thought I was going insane! I had recalls of a previous event with Autobot X. The last recorded transference of a human into a bot body. He went on a rampage and almost killed everyone. I was so worried I was going to do the same.”

“I could take you by myself. You couldn’t take on the whole of Cybertron.”

“I’m a giant robot now.” He smiles standing up straight. She steps close to him clearing the top of his head by a good few inches. “Okay...not THAT giant. But it’s not like I could ride you anymore.” His eyes go wide and he quickly spins away from her.

Jack chuckles through clenched teeth. She quirks an eyebrow and pulls him gently around by the shoulder. “Oh, he can still laugh? I was worried you’d be morose for eternity.”

He stops the soft laugh and then looks back up to her. “Was it...weird me riding you? I just...feeling all this input now, it’s suddenly dawned on me how inappropriate that had to be for you.” 

Now it was her turn to look away. If bots could blush. “Jack...we were...partners. It’s how we functioned. That’s all.”

“Well...are we still partners then?” He reaches out and touches her bicep. “It’s not like I can ride you anymore.”

Her fingers come up and brush against his. “You’ll always be my partner, Jack. If you want to be. I mean given time you could probably scan a small alt mode which could mass shift your form to something closer to human scale and you could still ride me.”

He presses himself against her. It’s still surprising to him that she feels smooth and soft like flesh to his sensors. And her warmth against him has the same affect flesh would to his previous body. 

“Jack...do...you still want to be my par...be with me?” 

“I always have. I always will.” His pretender lips press against the back of her neck cabling. She trembles. It’s been cycles since anyone touched her tenderly. She thought at one point that Cliffjumper would be more than a friend, but battle hardened them and friendship endured. Everything else faded. With Jack, though, it only grew with time.

The rest of his body presses up behind her. Her idle races as she feels the familiar prescience of him on her back. She almost transforms out of reflex. The suddenly pressure of his new interface node under the pretender skin flexes and engorges. 

She turns towards him, her shoulder armor rising and falling with each labored breath. Her faceplate dips forward and presses against his human-like lips. He inhales sharply and then exhales into her mouth as they kiss.

.

Moments later Jack thanked his luck that his data dump included a gps location to the private quarters he was supposed to occupy once he left the repair bay. Their bodies bang into the automatic doors a moment before they opened. Chuckling, but not breaking their embrace, the pair stumble into the sparse room, Jack falling backwards onto his recharging slab. The door slides shut and a holographic set of lettering scrolls down the middle. ‘Recharge in progress’

Jack sits back up meeting her body with his. The Recharge notice turns off. The two breathe hard as they exchange kisses and touches down each other’s arms and waists.

Arcee unzips the unitard garment Ratchet had fabricated to cover Jack’s pretender shell down his chest. His hands reach behind her hips and pulls her up between his spread legs. His lips pressing over and over down her chest armor to her abdominal flex points. She gasps with each kiss and thrusts her hands into the open collar of his garment pushing it down past his shoulders. She lowers her head kissing his neck and shoulders as his touch behind her causes her carapace to retract her lower armor that normally dangles behind and in front her of leg connectors. His fingers dig passionately into her rear plating squeezing. The micrometers of give in the plating feels like a soft human back end to his sensors. He feels his internal fluid levels shifting and flooding into the tubing within his node. 

She feels it press against her thighs and takes a step back moving his hands from her ass to the edges of the recharge slab. He’s about to speak and she shushes his lips before lowering herself onto her knees. With gentle precision she unzips the unitard the rest of the way as his node flicks itself free and stands before her face place. The blue of her eyes highlighting it’s rounded, but ridged form. She hadn’t seen a human node before. It was pink like his pretender shell. Ratchet says the form was based on a myriad of images downloaded during the repair processes as neural pathways were created in his cybernetic brain. Ratchet says it was best to use images Jack saw of himself as it would be the most familiar his shell could feel like. It’s a good thing it was from Jack’s point of view. No telling what Ratchet would have come up with as a hybrid node if he made it from scratch. 

This node seemed smoother than the usual one. A rounded tip with a lip on the top of it. Thick tubing on the underside which would have been filled with blood in another time was now glowing blue with energon. Small rings of light emitted every few centimeters encircling the girth of it. 

“Arcee?” Jack called out. His voice caught in his throat as she put his node in her’s. He fell back against the recharge slab again. The lettering on the door returned as Arcee’s warm moist mouth pressed forward and pulled back along his length. His breath sharpened in one direction and guttered out a moan in the other. 

He felt close. She felt the warmth swelling from the base and pulled her mouth free. “You’re close?” 

“Mmm. I’m sorry...new body...sensors...”

She smiled and her eyes lowered to his node, “Relax, my Jack. I’ve got you.” She placed the node in her mouth again just past the tip. Her cheeks swelled with each involuntary thrust of his hips gushed fluids into her mouth. She felt it mix with the lubricants of her throat and flush down into her system merging with her own energon. The seams along her body glowed for a moment and she closed her eyes tight with a happy hum. Then she gasped as she caught her breath.

Standing up she traced her fingers up his thighs to his ribs and finally bent over and slide onto the recharging slab next to him. Her left arm curled under her head and her right resting on his chest as his cooling system rose and fall to return his internal systems to normal. He stared at the ceiling. She stared at his face.

“Arcee...” he lazily raises a hand and rests it over hers on his chest. “I feel you in my spark.”

“In your heart?”

“No...it’s my spark. I’ve felt it since I woke up. I think it started in that tunnel when I hooked my new energon pump to your spark chamber.”  
“We bonded.” She breathed and nestled her face up against the side of his head.

“Yeah.” His data dump said ‘Spark Bonded’, but his heart said “I love you.”

“I love you too, Jack. Alway have. Always will.”


	4. Tiny Little Hairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Use protection, young bots.

Ch 4 - Tiny Little Hairs 

The automated lights flickered on half a mega cycle ago. Arcee got up feeling recharged and looking to continue bonding with Jack but being this was his first interface as a cybernetic hybrid and his first full day as a cybernetic hybrid she let him continue to recharge. She saw to refitting parts of her armor that locked in their retracted positions that a long time of disuse has gotten them stuck in 

Hidden layers of carbon scoring lie in between gears that don’t get cleaned often and have suffered eons of battle. During this maintenance she decided to take a look in the reflection port to check out just how bad of a need to get resurfaced she was. She dropped the spanner she was using to fix her plating. The clatter surprisingly didn’t wake Jack. 

Her internal chronometer ticked away as she stared at herself. She upgraded every few centuries but she knew her current face very well. It was silver. Chipped in places. A long chin and wide blue eyes. Not since the fall of Cybertron did she have any other face. A narrow bridge nose now graces the center of her once familiar face. Tiny little hairs in a sweeping pattern dotted the edges of her now white eye lids. A pair of lips a shade darker than her skin and slightly blueish in hue stretch back and forth revealing soft pink gums, separated teeth and a tongue. Flesh. Under her face plate which without her realizing retracted into her cranial armor leaving her in this state of awe for a long time. 

Behind her she heard the recharge slab power down and the tinny whine of small contacts retracting into the slabs innards. Jack sat up, she couldn’t bring herself to face him. This has to be a glitch. 

“Hey, you. Morning.” He rubbed at his face she saw in the reflection. “I dreamed. I didn’t know Cybertronians dreamed.”

“Jack...” she weakly called out. 

“Sorry. I know, I know. Every time I show surprise at the sentient things a sentient race does makes me look more like an ass.”

“Jack...”

His attention snapped to her. She was not a weak person. She rarely showed fear, so this tone shook him awake. “What is it? are you okay?”

Arcee clenched her fists and turned to face him. He stood up sharply when he saw her face. “It’s real isn’t it?”

He crossed the room in two steps and reached up to touch her face. He hesitated and looked into her eyes for permission. The slightly squint and furrow of her eyebrows signaled to him that she needed his touch. His fingers trembled as he inches forward. He sensors in his digits read the surface as he made contact. The data fed back to him flooding his cybernetic neural pathways with numbers and symbols referring to skin, pores, vellus hairs, a pulse. His eyes traced the contours of her new visage and then his fingers ran down her cheek to her neck. 

“Cabling...but still a pulse. You feel like a bot, but you have hallmarks of an organic...Arcee. We need to see Ratchet, Perceptor...literally anyone smarter than I am!”

That thing she never says escapes her lips, “I’m scared...”  
.

“You should be!” Ratchet says as he moves the scanner away from her face. The med lab was abuzz with several other bots. Perceptor was reviewing a slide under his microscope lens. First Aid was reviewing data flooding across his computer screen. The last doctor was reviewing Jack’s form with a chuckle. 

“Nice bedside manner, Ratchet.” The red bot said. Jack feels uneasy around him even though he was the first first to switch sides around him and his team. “You’ve got to set your patient at ease before delivering bad news. Like so.” His hand transforms into a large spinning buzzsaw. Jack recoils in fear and almost falls backwards off the exam table. 

“Don’t worry, meatboy. I won’t have to use this!” Jack exhales and settles back on the table. “See, Ratchet? Good news makes him relax. So now to the bad news. You’ve clearly been infected by the hybrid components of those Megatron Clones.”

“He knows that, Knockout. It’s why he’s suddenly not human sized and wearing a pretender shell.” Ratchet doesn’t break his exam of Arcee as he calls back to the former Decepticon. 

Knockout leans in to Jack and whispers with a smirk, “I like to pretend I’m not in the know. Makes him feel superior and special to tell me what to do. Now WheelJack...no that’s taken. Jackimus Prime? Bah, to grandiose. Darbytron!” 

“Knockout...enough, man. What’s going on with Arcee?” Jack shoves past the sleek formed doctor and heads over towards the boxier, elder bot. “Ratchet, do you have a diagnosis or anything?”

“Mmm...” He looks to First Aid for confirmation who in turn looks to Perceptor as he transforms to bot mode. Percy then confirms the nod prompting Ratchet to look at Arcee sitting up on an exam table and Jack who now stands next to her. “Arcee, it appears that you too were infected with the hybrid clone cells during the explosion.”

She looks to Jack and then to the floor and then back up to the doctors. “Why did it take so long for me to change, when Jack’s hybridization only took hours.”

“The data is inconclusive since we’ve never encountered this sort of artificial evolution before. Perhaps the difference in mass had something to do with how fast the cells could infect enough of the body to cause the outward changes.”

First Aid stepped forward holding up a pad screen showing her data that made her circuits swim. “It would seem you still retain your spark chamber, cybernetic neural network and overall you’re still cybertronian. You just seem to have a sort of nanomesh form of organics under portions of your exo armor which has adapted to be retractable.” 

“So...I’m still me?” There’s that phrase again she thought. She looked at Jack and forced herself to smile. “Of course I am. But what does this mean? Will I continue to change until I’m organic? Jack became mostly cybernetic when his change occurred.”

“Occurring-“ Interjected Knockout. He lifts a small vial of fluid sample he took from Jack. 

Jack moves to look at the vial. “What do you mean? I haven’t felt any other changes since the first one?”

Knockout placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder and laughed, “Change takes energy, pal. And you were plum out until this morning when you recharged. Plus, and trust me on this. The pretender shell is likely slowing some of the processes.”

Jack looked at the faux flesh covering his hands. “So if I take off the shell...”

“It won’t matter. The shell is a stop gap measure. I created this version of the shell during the war to use on minicons to blend in with humans and infiltrate your organizations. But, I defected before putting it into use. It has its limits though. A bot your size will strain the shell’s limits very quickly.” 

Arcee steps up next to Jack, “how quickly?”

“3...2...” Knockout smirks prompting Arcee to take a threatening step forward. “Easy fleshy. I’d hate to get infected as well.” 

First Aid was whispering with Ratchet drawing the attention of Knockout, Jack and Arcee. Jack clears his throat. “You wanna share with the class, Docs?”

Ratchet gestures for First Aid to go ahead. “Well...it seems Knockout is correct. You’re still undergoing the process. Arcee strangely seemed stable so we re-reviewed the data concerning the hybrid cells and it appears...well...hmm...how to inquire delicately.”

He looked to Ratchet for help. Ratchet just rolls his eyes and hefts his shoulders before cocking his head. “Have you two been interfacing?”

Both Jack and Arcee stiffen like a pair of kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. “That’s...not...” Jack stammers.

First Aid continued, “Well, it seems the cells that entered you hybridized you and then went dormant. Our new analysis revealed that the cells can’t directly hybridize a Cybertronian. Concluding that a new strain of cells had to be made that could. Well there’s only one source of those and since you haven’t been injured since your transformation, the only other source of cell exchange would be a physical interface.”

Jack’s gaze whips to Arcee his face screaming with apologetic energy. She grasps his hand, “Jack. It’s not your fault. We both wanted to bond like we did. We had no idea this could happen.”

Knockout turns and starts to exit the lab calling back. “This is what happens when you rigid types promote virtual interface only education to the protoforms. They never learn the true dangers awaiting them.”

First Aid, Perceptor and Ratchet glare at him as he exits. Their attention is suddenly pulled towards the area behind them as Jack crashes through the exam table Arcee had previously occupied. The doctors rush to his side but are beat to him by Arcee. Jack’s back arches up as he screams in pain. 

Moments pass as the doctors try and soothe him. A tearing sound and a flush of liquid energon sprays their and Arcee’s faces. They all leap back a step as Jack settles.

A wide blue spoiler adorns his back having shredded through the pretender shell. Jack shivering turns over and looks up. The pretender shell around his face has likewise fallen away. His face like Arcee’s is an inhuman color but retains its human softness and features. Blue grey skin, darker grooves drift down from his lower eyelids to his jawline. A decorative silver crest adorns his forehead, energon dripping from it. 

Arcee raises a hand to her gaping mouth.

“Is...is it bad?” His voice has a bit of bot reverb to it. 

“You’re so sexy...” Arcee gasps through her fingers.

All three doctors uniformly roll their eyes as they exhale in relief. 

.

Later that evening, on a catwalk over a busy avenue dotted with alt forms racing by and drowning out any eavesdroppers, Knockout hears the connection on his long distance comm finalize with a beep.

“Hey, it’s me. You know that thing you asked me for years ago but I said was impossible? Well...just call me a miracle worker.”

The comm link disconnects as he raises the vial of Jack’s cells up into the light with a smile. 

“See you soon, scout.”


End file.
